


Metamorphosis

by theunwillingheart



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Character Study, Christian Character, F/M, Gen, Temptation, Timeheart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 09:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10761651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunwillingheart/pseuds/theunwillingheart
Summary: “There’s little enough time left, for any of us.”Snippets from the life of Betty Callahan, up through and beyondThe Wizard’s Dilemma.Spoilers for Books 1-5.





	Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry. I’m still recovering from _The Wizard’s Dilemma_. I’ll get there.
> 
> Disclaimer: Young Wizards and its characters belong to Diane Duane. I wonder if she’ll pay for my therapy.

Harry gets out of his chair and steps over to her side.

He moves around her crutches propped against the table, her ankle cocooned in gauze.  Keeping his eyes fixed on hers, he slowly gets down on one knee.

“Just you and me, Betty.  It’ll be grand—whaddaya say?” 

The ring is so simple, compared to the ones that get advertised, the ones in the movies.  He’s dressed in his best, but he still smells, as he always does, of earth and pollen.

“An injured dancer and a threadbare gardener?”  Her laugh is light and fluttery.  “We’d be poor all our lives!”

Of course she says yes.  _Of course_ she does.  And she has never been happier.

That night, a single helper cell in her brain decides that it would rather not help anymore.  Its rebellion, the reenactment of a tragedy carried out in the events before time, passes on into its children—two, then four, then eight, then sixteen—and they form a tiny knot of corruption, which crawls and chews and bides its time.

 

Her daughter’s beautiful face is a sea of bruises.

Betty’s fingers flit delicately across the cuts and scrapes.  At times, their eyes will meet, and Betty’s heart will freeze long enough for her to feel it breaking, before Nita hurriedly breaks the contact, ashamed.

“—keep telling you, this wouldn’t happen if you just _stood up_ for yourself, gave them a reason to—”  Harry is pacing, ranting, distraught.  He doesn’t understand.  But Betty does.

Betty bites her lip and continues the painstaking work of putting her child back together.

 

Circles in the sand, words in the night, a silent thunderclap—and they are standing on the moon.

The beauty of it is beyond comprehension.  She gapes and gapes at the majestic, glowing stillness surrounding her and finds herself grasping for purchase.  It hits her all at once, and she is filled with an ecstasy.  Suddenly, she is two-thirds water, and all of it is running together, exulting.  Were it not for the reduced gravity, she would not have been able to keep herself upright.

Nita’s somber eyes follow hers as she gazes upon the waning Earth.  _So_ this _is what it all means_ , Betty thinks.  _For me and for us all._

Upon their return, she and Harry try to talk Nita out of it, only to find that their little girl has learned to stand up for herself after all.

 

They are sitting at their kitchen table, waiting for the return of their children, when it happens.

Light pours in from every direction, blinding her, blinding her husband, blinding their strange guests.

The sudden assault of unbearable brightness tears at her eyes, makes her cry aloud in astonishment and terror.  She shuts them tight, but her flimsy eyelids do nothing to block it out.  She wriggles and squirms and curls into a ball.  Beside her Harry yells, “A nuclear strike!  It’s the Soviets; I always knew—”

Across from her she can make out two male voices reciting in unison, though the words are indistinct.  Slowly, slowly, the light in the kitchen dims to a level that she can withstand, though the world beyond it is still whited out.  The four of them sit, staring at each other, holding their breath, for what feels like an eternity.

And then it is over.  All that remains are the afterimages burned onto her retina.

Tom folds his arms and looks at Carl.  “Olbers’s Paradox?” he asks.  Carl looks back and nods.

Betty grabs Harry’s hand, bracing herself.  “What was that?” she demands.  “What did that mean?”

Tom looks out the window and up into the night sky.

“If it means what I think it does,” he says, the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips, “Dairine is even more incredible than we’d thought.”

She shakes her head.  “I could’ve told you that,” she says, and for a wonderful moment the fear and anger abate, replaced by a mother’s affection.

 

She is helping her husband close down the shop when she sees It lingering at the door.

To her It looks like a tall, slender young man, finely dressed in the kind of designer wear they could never afford—well-cut trousers and a fitted button-down shirt.  He eyes their wares reproachfully.

“Too many flowers,” he mutters, and his anodyne expression is briefly replaced with a look of such seething hatred for all things growing and fecund that it drives the breath from her.  But his face quickly regains its composure, and he looks pleasant and respectable once more.

“I’m sorry,” she says, approaching him cautiously.  “We’re about to close for the day.  Can I help you with anything?”

He catches a glimpse of the spreadsheet in her hand.

“You’ve been balancing your ledgers,” he says.  His smile is fire.  “Let’s see you balance these.”

His smile is fire, but his touch is ice.  Stars of pain burst before her eyes as a butterfly emerges from the chrysalis inside her head.  It takes flight and leaves her listless on the ground.

 

The pump connected to her arm keeps beeping, but she can still hear the two voices in the hallway outside her door.  She catches bits and pieces of their hushed conversation by concentrating past the steady thrumming in her skull.

“…can do this.  Just go over what we…”

“…if she asks… I’m not sure what…”

“… that we have to do further workup, before we can…”

“… feel so _awful_ to tell her…”

“…difficult part of our job… have to learn how to…”

_Someone is being coached_ , she realizes with growing fear.  _They are_ preparing _to talk to me._

This, more than anything they tell her directly, is what she remembers afterwards.

 

She plucks the glede from the bracelet and cradles it in one palm.  It is sharp and brilliant and piercing, like a piece of light preserved from before the Fall of Adam.

She lets its power fill her, and she becomes mighty and resplendent in the light.  Suddenly, all the world’s a stage, and she the only player.  She looks down from a great height onto Nita, and Kit, and the Thing that would take her from all she loves.  She reaches out to punish It.

_Let’s see you balance_ these, she thinks with perverse glee as It stumbles through the wasteland It has made of her body.  She pushes and shoves and throws It like a prop.  She might crush It like the worm It is, have her way with _It_ for once, and it is so easy; _it could always be so easy, if only I would_ —

No.  No, she knows how that would end.  She is too familiar with the old stories.  No promise of immortality can make her forget what she has known: the desert, the parapet, the cup not taken away.

“Mom, _no_!” Nita is shouting, reaching, distraught.  She doesn’t understand.  But she will.

Betty tosses the spark aside and continues the painful work of falling apart at the seams.

 

“You let It go?” Dairine’s face is white with shock.  “You could have beaten It up and made It pay, and you _let It go?_ ”

Betty’s face falls.  “Nita told you,” she says.

Nita runs into the room after her sister.  “Dari, _wait_ —”

Dairine holds up a hand.  The shock has turned to rage.  “Why?” she asks.  “Why would you just _throw_ all that power away?”

Betty looks ruefully at her beautiful baby girl.  “If I had used it that way,” she says softly, “I might have lived… but my life would have been twisted into something not worth living.  I couldn’t let my soul become like that, not even to save my own life.”

“Couldn’t you have thought about _us_?” Dairine’s eyes are full of tears.  “About _me_?  Don’t you want to live here anymore?”  She takes a few angry, shuddering breaths.  “I _need_ you!  You can’t do this to me; you can’t _possibly_ be _doing_ this to me—” The tears overflow, and she runs out the door.

Nita stares helplessly at her mother.  “I’m sorry,” she says, shaking, “The précis left out your actions, so she asked me about it.  I didn’t know she would—”

Betty swallows against the lump in her throat and pats her older daughter on the shoulder.  “She has a right to know, sweetie,” she says hoarsely, “and a right… to wrestle with it.”

Later that evening, Dairine enters the living room and sits beside Betty on the couch.  She gives her mother a hug, then lies down with her head in Betty’s lap, the way she used to as a little girl.

Betty runs her fingers through Dairine’s red hair.  Evening turns to night as she soothes her daughter to sleep and listens to the frantic stirrings of the insect trapped behind her eyes.

 

“Can we leave early?” she asks her husband.  “I’d like to make a quick visit before the appointment.”

When they pull up in the driveway, she turns to him.

“There are just a few things I’d like to ask for myself.  Will you wait for me?”

He looks straight ahead, stoically, and nods.  He is so still and fragile, like a specimen pinned to corkboard.  She wishes she could hide him away in safety, like the rare treasure he is.

She kisses him, then walks slowly up to the house, feeling his gaze follow her through the windshield.

Tom appears almost as soon as she rings the doorbell.  He’s dressed casually but is well-kempt—the look of a man who expects urgent business to arrive without warning at any moment of the day or night.

“Betty,” he ushers her in, and out of the cool morning air.

This is her first time meeting him on his own ground, inside his own house.  In the past, when she had wanted to talk to them, she had always called them over to her house, then busied her nervous hands with cooking for two more men.  She would never admit it to anyone, but she had been scared to enter into the dwelling place of adult wizards.  _But of what?_ she wonders, bemused.  Now that she is inside the place that she had feared, she is surprised by how ordinary everything looks.  _Perhaps it is only an illusion, a veil over what is really there…_

Never mind.  She will not scare easily any longer.

Tom pulls out a chair for her and hands her a cup of warm tea.  He pours himself a cup as well, and they sit together in silence for some moments, sipping quietly, breathing in steam.  He waits patiently and respectfully for her to speak.

“Nita did an intervention on me,” her voice is oddly calm.

Tom looks grim.  “I know,” he says, and she can sense his sorrowful pride.  It calls to her own.

“I want you to promise me, Tom,” she says, and her voice is not calm anymore.  “Give me an oath that you will watch over them, when I’m gone.”

Tom does not break eye contact.  “We will do whatever we are able to advise and protect them, for as long as we are given,” he says, “but we cannot replace you, Betty.”  When he speaks her name, his voice cracks slightly, the only sign of the depth of his emotion.  “No one can, or should.”

She nods.  It will have to be enough for now.  “Thank you,” she says.  She gets up to leave.

“Betty.” 

She turns back toward him.

“You watch over them too,” he says.  His face is full of yearning for somewhere far away.

She smiles as warmly as she can.  How curious, that she should give him comfort in her pain.

“I will,” she vows, “I will forever.”

 

She cannot move, and breathing is getting harder.

She is dimly aware of her body lying in bed, encased in a bundle of blankets.  Beyond her, her family keeps a solemn, silent vigil around her.  They stand immobile, captive, burning brightly.

A breeze comes in through the window.  It smells like flowers in springtime, even though she knows it is winter.

Someone has started to wail softly.  Maybe they all have.  She wants to reach out to them, to hold them close, but she can’t; she can’t.

The wind tugs at her wings, unwrapping them in color and song.

“I don’t want to leave my family,” she cries.  But the mountain is so lovely.

She thinks she will ascend it and dance upon its peak.

**Author's Note:**

> I have to say—Ms. Duane chose the right tumor. If you are looking for nasty adult brain malignancies, you can’t do much worse than [glioblastoma multiforme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioblastoma). This high-grade cancer of astrocytes (brain helper cells) likes to grow fast and penetrate deep. If it manages to extend from one side of the brain to the other, it takes the term “[butterfly glioma](https://images.radiopaedia.org/images/790/f25c763a2027d790b1b1dc326dadb9_big_gallery.jpg)” for its resemblance to a butterfly taking wing on imaging.


End file.
